Deleted Scenes - Elijah and Vera
by welshficwitch
Summary: A dreaded OFC/Original fic! There's just not enough Elijah in S3, and to tide me over, I wrote these little mini scenes! Just testing the waters before I try writing some historical Originals stuff! Rating M but as yet there's no sex, but quite strong violence in one scene!


Rating: M

Writer: welshficwitch

Fandom: The Vampire Diaries

Summary: A series of flashbacks and scenes set after Elijah's work in breaking the blood bind established by his mother...

Elijah Mikaelson belongs to Julie Plec's The Vampire Diaries; though Vera is a creature of my own creation, her looks are based on Italian Actress Cosima Coppola...

The telephone was an old one she had taken out of storage and had wired like a new one. True vintage! Only a vampire knew the meaning of vintage. Only a Milanese vampire knew just how true the old adage about fashions returning around and around could be. But the telephone had been her first, and she had been so excited to speak to people in another town, another county, another continent.

"Vera..."

"Elijah?" She sank into a chair. "What is it? You sound terrible!"

A slight crackle in his voice. The slightest lightening of the tone to tell her his vocal chords were stretched with worry and strain.

"I didn't know if you would be there, cara mia, I'm glad you are. How are you?"

He did not like to admit when that ordered calm was ruffled. He was speaking English, so she did too.

"I am not bad," her own accent was pure Italia, and always would be. "Non che male! You sound very american, are you back in the New World, bello?"

"Yes, but..."

Her hearing sharpened, and she heard an announcement, the word 'boarding' sounding clear.

"Come," she told him. "I will meet you at the airport. Where are you coming from?"

"Ah," a pause, "LAX."

California. He had been home, then.

"I'll see you at the gates, bello! Keep breathing, Elijah, you hear?"

***

_The night air is warm over a city rebuilding itself. Milan still stank of ashes, but it was rebuilding, the vicious, cold hatred of Barbarossa had not broken their spirit, though he had shown them the darker side of their souls. In a half built house, the scaffolding abandoned at dark, the click of ceramic cups could be heard.___

_"E-li-jah!"___

_"Eliiiiich-"___

_"-jah!"___

_"You can keep saying it in that definitive voice, but it still doesn't work!"___

_A crackle of laughter, two taps of sound in the night and then he dropped the broader smile for one more controlled.___

_"Elijah!"___

_"Can I not just call you 'bello'?" Sparkling blue eyes and raven dark hair, a mass of it, curly and frizzy and mad and totally uncontrollable once it was unbound. So different to Talia's lustrous hair. She saw the way he blinked, withdrawing for a moment, and she stood, came to him, and sat on his lap. "Tell me once more!"___

_"Elijah..."___

_"Eliiiiii- Elijah!"___

_"Bene!" His teeth shining as he smiled then, putting a hand on her back to stop her falling, the other hand holding the cup he toasted her with. A bead of wine dropping from her lip as she drank and landing on her chest below her collar bone. Rising heat and his lips against that drop, the veins beneath his eyes swelling and his mouth opening with need. And then she was thrown away, landing ten feet away, a loud crack as her arm broke and the bone split the skin. He had healed her, begging forgiveness, hating himself...___

_...and she had laughed. Laughed at how strong his reactions were and how horrified he was in his need to protect her. She had kissed him, even when he told her about the hunger, his need for blood, that he was a monster. She had laughed at him for being dramatic, and told him that he was not a monster, and told him about Barbarossa and what he was doing to Italy._

***

Men walked with rolled up sleeves, their blazers and jackets and coats over their arms or slung over their suitcases. He had no baggage, and his suit was barely crumpled. It was Italian, of course, though probably imported to wherever he was living. California. From a quick look on her sleek laptop she doubted Mystic Falls imported italian silk suits. He spread his hands and smiled slightly.

"Vera cara! You look," he kissed her cheek, "sensational!" So, he had had time to get himself under control again. "No really, you look like a film star! I expect the papparazzi to meet us on the doorstep!"

She pushed her hair back with the sunglasses, perching them on her head.

"And you look like the most handsome man in all the world, but ah! You are!"

"You flatter me, I fear..."

"Elijah, if you are going to speak with that ridiculous accent-"

"What accent would you prefer? I was an early immigrant to America, you know this about me!"

"One of the first westerners in the New World and yet it still sounds forced!" She forced an arm into his, and he bent it automatically. He might have been born a viking, but chivalry and the troubadours had left their mark on him.

"And what do you call your oh-so-generic accent, Vera?" he teased as they made their way to the elevators to the car park.

Sighing, she switched to langue d'oc. In an airport any number of languages could be heard, and so long as they did not pass a medieval scholar, they would be fine.

"Do you want to eat before we go home?"

"Vera..." he looked at her in surprise and disappointment as she pressed the button and the doors closed with a bing.

"Don't look like that, bello," she reclaimed his arm. "I know a delightful little trattoria where you can get some real espresso! If you have been in America, you will need it! And maybe we can get some real pasta, none of that Sicilian marinara nonsense! And then we will get you a new suit, that one has a crease in it, Elijah! A CREASE! Your reputation will be ruined!"

He laughed. Two taps of mirth, and then gone, and the same restrained, sad smile back on his eyes. That forced, polite smile he had had after the business in England in the 1400s, when he had lost Katarina, and worse, when he had lost Klaus.

***

_"Elijah?"___

_"I can't believe you're still here! Protestants at every door and you're living here like the Queen of Sheba!" He walked in, looking around at her furnishings.___

_"Please, come in," she said, closing the door, her undead heart fluttering weakly, "make yourself at home!"___

_He paused by a portrait of her hanging in front of him. It used light in a way that had fathered the renaissance, brought enlightenment to artists and reality to art.___

_"This is the picture Klaus did for you!" He turned, his lips parted around the smile. He was fiddling with some loose coins in one hand. Uncertain of a mood she did not recognise, still thrown by his sudden appearance, she hesitated.___

_"As I remember he did it for you," she folded her tiny hands under her arms. "But you did not want it damaged in your travelling and searching! You are back from Russia then?"___

_"Oh, long, long back from Russia," he went back to contemplating the picture. "Your eyes are downcast in this. It's a shame. Your eyes are so brilliant. So clear!"___

_"It was the fashion. I think Klaus wanted to make me a Madonna!" She drew close, staring at his profile with trouble in her eyes. "What is it, Elijah? Has something happened to Klaus?"___

_And he had wept. Turned and tried to speak but his voice had been trapped in his throat, and he had blinked and looked in shock at the teardrops on his hands when he wiped them away. She did not know, but she thought that might have been the first time he had cried since childhood. He had stumbled back from her, and fallen, and then moved with such speed, tried to leave and fallen against the door. Swift, violent movements, until he rested his head on her shoulder and sobbed, ugly, howling sobs. They had slept on the floor, leaning against her wooden door, until he had woken just as a ray of sunlight neared her outstretched hand, and suddenly she was in her room, shutters closed, and he was beside her.___

_And he had told her of Katarina as he had once told her of Talia._

***

"Is she like the other two?" Vera watched him twitch the cuffs through his new jacket.

"Elena? No...at least..." his eyelids fluttered down, concealing his eyes from her. "She is not like Katarina. Not like Katherine. In some ways, she is darker. She did not have Katarina's curiosity with life, she lost her parents and that...changed her more than being cast out changed Katarina. On the other hand there is a purity about her. She has her moral code and she does not deviate from it, even if it hurts her."

"Like you," she suggested. His eyes slammed to hers.

"Not anymore." He regarded himself in the mirror for a moment, and then went to sit in the windowseat, touching his fingers against the new wood. Well, not new, she had replaced it in the seventeen hundreds, and again in the eighties. But the last time he had not been upstairs. He had been too fixed in his search for Klaus and his family, and the trail had gone cold in the '20s. He had only come because a hunter was closing in on her and she had sent messages to all of his haunts, terrified, begging for help. And he had come. Of course he had come.

***

_Three knocks on the door. Heavy. Determined.___

_Footsteps in the house coming closer, and she was hiding, she, hundreds of years old but hiding because the flamethrower had come into existance and she was so very frightened of fire. Hidden in a cupboard, the door closed, her hands desperately holding it shut.___

_"I'm coming for you, vampire! I will find you! Maybe I'll just burn the whole house down!"___

_More knocking.___

_"Is that one of your victims? Did you compell him too, strechia?"___

_Tears on her cheeks, her skin dead white, her eyes and lips tight lines of fear.___

_A long creak as the door downstairs opened.___

_"Vera?"___

_Relief.___

_And then the door had been wrenched open, and there had been fire, and she had screamed.___

_That was the only time she had seen him partly undressed, his jacket and tie off, his sleeves rolled up because he had gotten blood on the white linen. After that he always wore darker coloured shirts and started a trend. And he was always either fully dressed or stripping. He had smoothed the hair back from her face as she recovered. It had hurt and itched as her skin had gradually healed, and he had already cleaned up the blood when she felt ready to rise from the sofa. He had given her then a silver necklace, ironically enough a simple cross, to wear to protect her from the sun._

***

"How can you blame yourself for that?"

"I sacrificed my code, Vera," he sighed, and poured more wine. "I behaved like...like the others. She was right. My- Esther. She called me a monster and she was right."

"She was lashing out," she tried to capture his attention, to get him to look at her, but he stared steadfastly at his glass. "She wanted to gain herself a moment when you were weak so she could escape, oh bello, you are a good man!"

"I am not a man. I-"

"You are not a monster, Elijah, do not make me go over this again!" She stamped her foot, and finally he looked up, his lips curving in amusement.

"Did you just-"

"Yes, I did, and I will do more than that!" She held out a hand, and let it hover between them. "You gave me hope. You made me smile, you gave me a family in you and you taught me how to see a world beyond smoke and broken dreams. You showed me passion, and then you disappear again? You have not called me since the millennium, Elijah, did you know that?"

"I was getting closer-"

"I know, to your brother. Well, you found him, and it all came to a magnificent close, and now you are here and you are reeling and broken and I will fix you and I will send you back into the world, and you will go back to him, to hunt him or follow him, it makes little difference." Her voice rose and fell with throbbing passion, life and vitality the way only an italian could craft it. "You protect those who cannot protect themselves. You do what is right, not what would suit you better, because if that was not true, you would stay here and you would haunt the streets and keep crime at bay with me and we would laugh, Elijah, as we have before. But you are always on this...crusade, this jihad...to protect your family because you cannot bear to be selfish, not even for one day. You did not threaten the woman you love, and do not deny it, you loved her the moment you saw her...you did not threaten Elena because you wanted to save yourself, but because you wanted to save your family."

She reached out and touched his cheek.

"And no one understands family better than an Italian, Elijah, believe me. Stop hating yourself, bello. Hate politicians, hate criminals, hate murderers, hate daytime television or companies that do not release dvds of really, really good shows-"

"Slow few years?"

"A little...but don't hate yourself, bello." She kissed him. "Because you are a good man, and your family needs a good man. It needs an anchor or it will break apart again. It does not need a man like your father who will shout and demand and enforce. It does not need Klaus and his jealousy and competetiveness, or Finn's blind faith, or Kol's unthinking action. The man your family needs is you, because without you..." She kissed him again. "Without you we are all lost, Elijah."

He kissed her back.


End file.
